February 5th 2020

By Bill Berkowitz 

Let me be clear: President Donald Trump will not win the majority of the Latino or Black vote. He doesn’t have to! All Team Trump has to do is nudge the numbers among these constituencies up a little bit. And, as of this writing that’s what Team Trump is doing.

According to Washington Post Opinion writer Jonathan Capehart, Trump is not only raising tons of money, far outstripping his potential Democratic Party opponent, “he’s making a serious play for African American and Latino votes.”

Trolling for the Latino Vote

Trump, arguably the most anti-Latino president in modern history, held a rally in early January at the megachurch Ministerio Internacional El Rey Jesús, a predominant Latino congregation, and it  was a rousing success. Capehart maintained that “If you think the president’s open xenophobia and scapegoating of Latinos over immigration make him a nonstarter for that voting bloc, you have two blind spots.” One blind spot is the lack of understanding that this church’s congregation is made up of swing voters not traditional Cuban-American Republicans, and the other is power of the desire  among Latinos – as there was among many other generations of once-excluded immigrants -- to accept the invitation to join the dominant group. 

As George Mason University professor Justin Gest told Capehart, despite Trump’s vilification of Latinos, there is “The European-origin Latinos … who accept this invitation are the Italian, Irish, and Jewish Americans of 100 years before,” Gest told Capehart. “In exchange for their marginal promotion, they defer to the constructed racial hierarchy that once subordinated them.”

In 2016, Trump garnered 25-30 percent of the Latino vote. ABC News recently reported that “About 40.4% of eligible Latino voters came out to the polls during the 2018 midterm elections -- about 11.7 million voters in total, according to the Pew Research Center. A record 32 million Latinos are expected to be eligible to vote in 2020, making them the nation's largest minority for the first time.” According to columnist Ruben Navarrette Jr., “In the 2020 election, Trump seems likely to get between 25%-30% of the Latino vote. A recent poll by Telemundo found that 1 in 4 American Latinos would vote to re-elect him.”

Navarrette Jr. pointed out that there are three reasons to pay close attention to the Latino vote: “[T]hey’re a young population that is adding new voters at a staggering rate; They’re well-represented in so-called battleground states such as Colorado, Nevada and Florida; And close to two-thirds of Latinos are Mexicans or Mexican-Americans, who tend to be swing voters.” Even a small percentage increase in the traditional Latino vote for Trump could significantly impact the election unless it’s counter-balanced by new voter turnout driven by his anti-immigrant policies. 

“Black Voices for Trump”

During the 2020 Super Bowl, Trump’s commercial featured African Americans and touted his efforts at criminal justice reform. The ad highlighted the low unemployment rate, wage growth and strong economic prospects for African Americans and Hispanics. 

At every Trump rally, there is a sprinkling of African Americans in attendance.  While Trump is hailing his accomplishments regarding employment of American Americans, that has not generated much support within the black community. Nevertheless, he doesn’t have to increase his African American support by much. In 2016, Trump received 8 percent of win much support. In 2016, Trump received 8 percent of the black vote (2 percent higher then the six percent Mitt Romney received in 2012).  

Despite Trump’s racist record of words and deeds since his inauguration, all he needs is to garner a slightly bigger chunk of the black vote is all that he needs. To that end, in November Team Trump launched “Black Voices for Trump.” Trump pointedly said: “The Democratic Party left you. Today, we say: Welcome to the Republican Party.”

“Just as with the Latino vote, Trump’s outreach to African Americans isn’t about winning a majority of their votes,” Capehart noted, “It’s about shaving off enough votes from the expected Democratic hold on the black vote to eke out a win.” 

If the 2016 drop-off in black votes happens again in November, Trump will most assuredly benefit.  A March 2017 study by the Wisconsin State Journal found that “Republican Donald Trump received about 2,700 fewer votes than 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney,” the newspaper reported in March 2017, “while Democrat Hillary Clinton received almost 239,000 fewer votes than President Barack Obama.” 

Capehart pointed out that “According to the 2016 exit polls, Clinton won black women by 90 percentage points, but her advantage over Trump with black men was just 69 percentage points. Thirteen percent of African American men voted for Trump, and five percent voted for third-party candidates. That’s 18 percent of the black male vote that went to someone other than the Democrat.” How many of these voters can be persuaded to stick with or come over to team Trump and can their numbers be overcome by newly energized Black voters?

But Trump and the GOP are not content with the just increasing his numbers among Latino and African American voters. In addition to courting these votes, Trump’s GOP has launched, what has become a “tidal wave” of voter suppression efforts. “States are engaging in aggressive voter roll purges, polling site closures and uneven voting resource allocations that, in some cases, violate the law,” said Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the National Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “However, the Justice Department under President Donald Trump has not filed a single voting rights case on behalf of voters of color, only lawsuits to protect military voters.”